New study finds access to youth sports is unequal in Philadelphia. The city looks to change that.

Before the first pitch is thrown, Tyrone Young arrives early to the baseball field at Hunting Park to pick up trash in both dugouts where teenagers gather to play in North Philadelphia’s Heritage Baseball League.

The trash is what he can control. What he can’t fix are the deep holes on the base paths that make it nearly impossible to play when it rains. He believes race has something to do with the condition of his field.

“Certain fields you might go in the Northeast ... their fields are immaculate, but why do ours not look like that?” said Young, who founded the league in 2008.

A new city-funded study of nearly all public sports facilities in Philadelphia confirmed his suspicions: Neighborhoods with more white residents have more fields, amenities that are in better shape, and more youth sports programs than other areas. The survey, conducted across more than 1,400 fields, courts, and baseball diamonds in 2023, also found lower crime rates in the blocks surrounding sports facilities and youth programs, echoing the belief of many coaches that sports help kids stay out of trouble.

The study also found that areas with higher rates of homeownership have more sports facilities. Areas with a higher proportion of white residents are more likely to youth sports programs, while areas with a higher proportion of foreign-born residents are less likely to have them.

“I wouldn’t even want to imagine if they weren’t playing baseball what they would be doing,” Young said of his players. “So [we’re] giving them an avenue to do some stuff.”

The Philadelphia Youth Sports Collaborative (PYSC), a nonprofit consortium of youth sports providers, chose Temple University’s Sport Industry Research Center to conduct the study with funding from Philadelphia Parks and Recreation. The city and PYSC had a shared interest in gathering data on fields that had experienced “a lifetime of underinvestment,” said Beth Devine, PYSC’s executive director.

“As an advocate in this space, we not only have to identify the issues but we have to call them out,” Devine said. “If we want to say that we’re a youth sports city and we’re investing in youth sports, we can’t only do that, we have to look at the spaces where the kids are playing.”

» READ MORE: North Philly’s youth baseball fields are in sorry shape. They can’t wait long for MLB’s help.

The study’s results reflect Philadelphia’s de facto racial segregation and a pattern of disinvestment in communities of color. But they also show the city’s sports facilities are in poor shape overall, with 60% rated “somewhat below” or “far below” average quality, attributed in large part to heavy traffic, litter, and poor maintenance.

The city’s Rebuild initiative to renovate parks, libraries, and recreation centers has made a dent in the catalog of fields in need. But in Hunting Park, where Young’s Heritage League plays, the ball field built 13 years ago with help from former Phillie Ryan Howard is an example of what can happen when facilities don’t receive sustained care over time.

“The investment has to be a long-term, thoughtful, and deep investment,” said Mike Barsotti, the director of youth sports at Philadelphia Parks and Recreation. “Every neighborhood needs to have these great advantages, so how do we think about doing that, not in six months, but over a 20-year plan?”

For decades, Philadelphia leaders have been contending with how to fix the city’s park infrastructure — labeled “Acres of Neglect” by the Daily News in 2001 — amid a growing body of research tying quality green space to crime prevention.

Rebuild, launched under former Mayor Jim Kenney and continued by Cherelle L. Parker’s administration, has showed signs of success: Thirty-seven sites have received improvements and another 24 are under construction or in planning phases, according to a July report from the city, and sports facilities at completed sites were rated at 18% higher quality than other sites in the Temple study.

There’s also evidence that the money went to areas with the most need, according to a Pew report released last year.

However, Rebuild has been beset by delays and was largely funded by one-time cash infusions of bonds, grants, and city capital funds. Maintaining those sites and others over time with sustained investment should be a priority, Devine said.

“If you renovate a building with no solid long-term investment in the maintenance of what you’ve just done, you’re going to be talking about Rebuild again in 20 years,” Devine said.

Philadelphia ranked 14th among U.S. cities in total city spending on parks in 2024, according to the Trust for Public Land. The $83.5 million budgeted for Parks and Recreation this fiscal year comprised about 1.2% of the city’s $6.8 billion budget.

» READ MORE: Philly has a real need in finding its youth more safe spots to play baseball

The stakes of continued investment in youth sports are tied to the city’s crime prevention efforts, as the Temple study found 21% less violent crime in the immediate area surrounding sports facilities compared to sites without them. The study found similar trends for sites with more permitted youth sports programs.

“We talk about Rebuild and the importance of built physical infrastructure, but there’s a huge personal, social component to this, which I think is the programming itself, and is using these places as essentially a hub to build social capital and positive social relations among community members,” said Gareth Jones, the study’s principal investigator.

The Parker administration last year poured $3 million into youth sports, including $450,000 for PYSC’s Philly Youth Sports Fund, with an explicit focus on youth development and violence prevention, Philly Voice reported.

Shanika Bowen, whose son Elijah plays for Young’s Heritage Baseball League, said when children are doing something positive — like playing baseball — “we have to back them on that.”

“Many people are complaining about the kids being on the street and not having anything to do,” Bowen said. “That money needs to be put into different programs to have these kids doing something other than being out on the corners or running rambunctiously, not doing anything.

“If they don’t have the field, where are they going to go?”

Emelie Beckman contributed reporting to this story.

Playing Fields, Not Killing Fields is an Inquirer collaboration with Temple’s Claire Smith Center for Sports Media and the Logan Center for Urban Investigative Reporting, to produce a series examining the current state of Philadelphia’s youth recreation infrastructure and programs. The project will explore the challenges and solutions to sports serving as a viable response to gun violence and an engine to revitalize city neighborhoods.